Decimus

bio is to be coded! once I know what style I want

---

In the Starfall Isles the light of the glittering galaxies seeps into the minds of the Arcanist's children, inspiring the most fervent mages to practice the most dangerous magics until the arcane energy heightens their minds into something greater than mortal; in the Shifting Expanse the most daring dragons of the Stormcatcher's flight harness the lightning to experiment on their own bodies, until they are half-dragon, half-machine. These are just two of many similar rumors, for it is known that there will always be those in Sornieth who seek to change their form, to seek out perfection of mind and body, at the cost of—well, at what cost? Here is a tale the lorekeepers do not know.

In the Scarred Wasteland, or so it is said, change comes to the bodies and minds of the Plaguebringer's children unwillingly, and even they do not know its cause. Here all foul and festering things come forth, bubbling and frothing to the surface of the scarred earth that the Plague dragons call home. The plants grow twisted and tangled, and taste bitter like bile; the wildlife there are strangely and monstrously formed, or flash bright colors that warn all of their vile toxicity. While the dragons there survive, even they are not exempt from the disease that bathes the land. They whisper of hatchlings who are born with twisted wings, or many bulging eyes, or with multiple heads—hatchlings who die quietly in the night or grow to become outcasts and monsters. But worse still are the rivers and puddles of pestilence that boil and gush through the wasteland, which the dragons flee from—for a dragon who drinks from or bathes in the water is a dragon who finds itself rapidly mutating, turning into a nightmare.

In the Scarred Wasteland, there are dragons who seek to master these pools of change.

Somewhere under the surface of the cracked and boiling earth, there is a cave, a laboratory hidden in the endless dark and bedrock.

In the cave, past where the other dragons work their magic, there are ten hatchlings. A few of them have never seen the light. A few of them have, and long for it with the kind of desperate hunger that drives grown dragons mad. They have no names. Numbers mark their enclosures.

Hatchling 7 is the first to go. The darkness is too much for her young mind, the long silences too crushing. She screams and screams until her throat gives out, then lies on the floor of her enclosure, exhausted, barely breathing. In her terror she almost thinks is not enough air, here under the ground. She does not survive the first week.

Hatchling 2 fights back. She bites the first handler who approaches her, snaps and whirls about in belligerent fear, a crazed sort of terror shining out from her eyes. She claws at loose scales, breaths pitiful bursts of flame, goes for the eyes and wings and throats. The handlers make an example of her in front of the others.

Hatchlings 4 and 5 stop eating. They spend the days in a stupor, dreaming of better days, of sunlight and warm breezes and green. They dream of trees and fruit, flowers and grass. There is no green down here except the sickly green glow of the machinery that surrounds them. The others will learn to fear this green, in the end, but 4 and 5 slip away in their sleep, dreaming of the sun.

Hatchlings 3, 6, and 8 die in the first surgeries. The handlers want to make the ultimate dragon, the most optimal life-form. They trade secrets with the Lightning dragons of the Shifting Expanse, they exchange notes with the mages of the Starfall Isles. They combine flesh and steel to make something half-living, half-machine. The Stormcatcher's children know this best—all science comes with a price, and three more lives perish in the dark, snuffed out like candles.

Hatchlings 1 and 9 die in the trials. The handlers push their new hybrid bodies past their breaking point, run them through gauntlets and mazes, test their endurance and speed and strength. Hatchling 1 collapses during the sixth maze and does not rise. Hatchling 9 is wounded in the gauntlet and a blistering infection sets in; the handlers put him out of his misery.

Hatchling 10 survives.

In the beginning his scales had been black as pitch, his eyes the deep red of the Plaguebringer's flight. He keeps his mind through the long dark of his stone prison. The enclosure is suffocatingly small, the stone walls close in on him. There is not enough air. But he eats what he is given, does not cooperate with the handlers but does not resist. He goes under the knife and comes out half-dragon, half-machine, runs through the trials again and again until even the handlers are satisfied. A few of them look into his red eyes, notice that they are changing, becoming tinged with green. And are his scales, too, blending into a sickly shade of green? They notice how the streaks of lighter green look like the outline of a stunted skeleton, of bones. He does not speak. He barely seems to breathe. They laugh his silence and at night, they dream of their creation. As the years pass, the dreams turn into nightmares.

Hatchling 10. He is the only one left now, and the number seems ill-fitting now that he is nearly grown, the same size and shape of some of the handlers. The tenth—Decimus, a few start calling him. It is a lofty name, bestowed upon a creature who has only known the dark and the torturous whims of dragons willing to sacrifice all good for the sake of the experiment. Decimus survives.

One day, there is a fire.

One day, something is different—machinery is damaged, volatile material is disturbed, a piece of equipment displays the wrong reading—who can say? Maybe the fire was set by one of the handlers, longing for some light and warmth in the darkness of the caverns. There are none left to say.

Decimus awakes from his restless sleep to see the light of the fire.

Someone has left his enclosure unlocked—out of carelessness, or a last shred of mercy and regret? Decimus does not think of this. He steps out.

The flames around him lap at his scales, but Decimus has known greater pain. Decimus is half-steel, the tempered alloys of a thousand experiments—what does he care for fire? He sees the light. He moves quickly. He has seen his handlers move down this path before, and this one—but not this last one. Where does it lead? Up a flight of stairs, through a door that he casually breaks down with horrifying strength. And another door. He steps over a body. Which one of his jailers is it? There are more stairs, there is another door. The fire behind him fills his metal hide and limbs with a searing heat. Decimus pushes open the last door.

He sees the sunlight. Feels the breeze on his face. Smells the hot stench of the Scarred Wasteland around him, beholds the fields of twisted plants and scattered bones, the rivers of pestilence and filth, a grotesque parody of life.

But what does Decimus know of life?

He closes the door behind him. The fire rages below, in the endless caverns where nine hatchlings lost their lives. Decimus slowly raises his head, silently taking in the endless expanse before him. The open air. He has never thought there would be this much air.

Decimus begins walking.

The Stormcatcher runs his experiments, the Arcanist studies his magic. What do they know of changing form, of change and mutation? The Plaguebringer, and her children, know what it is to live in a land where the slightest misstep could change an unlucky dragon into an abomination. But even they have their nightmare tales, their whispered legends. There are stories of a dragon, half-alive, half-machine. He is unmoved by the effects of the mutating pestilence around him. His scales glow a sickly green, fouler than any pool of disease or river of filth. He rarely speaks.

Decimus wanders over hill and through valley, under light of sun and moon and stars.

There is so much space. So much air.

Under the steel, in his beating heart, he is content.

---